


Book Burning

by Brezifus



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Choosing to Protect, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Menstruation, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Puberty, References to human experimentation, Sometimes...Academia does not accurately reflect the Real World, perspective shift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27794446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brezifus/pseuds/Brezifus
Summary: Tseng studied the Ancients, learning everything about them except for who they really were.OrThe day that Tseng's perspective shifts from Shinra's to Elmyra's.
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough & Tseng, Elmyra Gainsborough & Tseng
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Book Burning

**Author's Note:**

> Terrible dry spell, getting my sea legs again, on one of the last days of my period and like yo, if anyone has like, a safe socially distanced yet incredibly violent method of performing a hysterectomy (perhaps a rube goldberg machine? a pit and a pendulum perhaps?) hit me the fuck up
> 
> "Chose not to use Archive Warnings" -- none of them really apply, but if menstruation, puberty, and insinuations of abuse aren't your thing, that's what that means. Abuse is not detailed nor even really accused, just...worried about.

The day Tseng realized that he had not, in fact, understood anything about the Ancients was the day Aeris screamed.

Tseng had taken the position of observer while she gardened in the church. If she needed help, she knew how to ask for it. She had been cultivating her skills alongside the garden for three years now, by far she knew more than him. Not that she passed up opportunities to boss him around, but sometimes she pretended like he wasn’t there. That was fine. Tseng had started keeping a small stack of books to entertain himself with, telling himself it was still relevant to the mission as they were all books on the history of the Ancients. Aeris had shown curiosity at first, but wrinkled her nose at them soon after. He figured a kid wouldn’t care, especially when Shinra’s publishing was as dry as its presentation. The church was quiet, its thick stone walls absorbing the sounds of the slums.

Those same stone walls made Aeris’s scream echo like frenzied bells and Tseng dropped his book to the floor.

“ _Tseng!_ Tseng, I’m dying!!”

The direct addressing of his name when it had been a day she hadn’t even greeted him spiked his chest and he sprung forward. Aeris was in the middle of her garden, panicking as she pawed at her dress and sobbed. A flash of red made him panic too, until he saw where the red was coming from.

She had hit puberty.

Aeris clearly didn’t know what that meant, as tears of shock and confusion streamed down her face and she wriggled as though she could escape the blood. Tseng opened his mouth to say something, but was stupefied for words even as she wrangled her soaked underwear down to her ankles. Hyperventilating, Aeris started to choke.

“ _Tseng—,”_

“You’re—,” Tseng snapped the words out too quick and too harsh, “You’re fine.”

Aeris whipped her gaze up, not at all comforted by his words.

“You’re fine,” he repeated. Looking down at the twisted, soaked fabric strung between her ankles, he debated on whether or not to tell her to _put that back, now, there’s nothing to worry about._ He shook his head instead and said, “Let’s...get you back to your mother.”

“ _What?_ ” her voice cracked, “That’s not fine! That doesn’t sound _fine!_ ”

“You _are_ fine,” Tseng tried to reason with no evidence.

“How do you know?!”

“I—Listen, it’d be better if—,”

She was not, could not listen when he didn’t give good answers, “ _That’s not fine!!_ ”

“Just, trust me,” Tseng pleaded with her.

“I _don’t!!_ ”

“I _know_ you don’t, but just this once, just—,”

“ _No!!!_ ”

Tseng straightened his spine to his full height and looked down at her. She was smudged with dirt and her legs were streaked with red. Her face was almost the same color, flushed with panic as she sobbed. There was nothing the Turk could say that would get through to her, especially when he hadn’t prepared for this. Part of him felt incredibly stupid for it—of course she would hit puberty, grow older, change. Ifalna should’ve been an indication of that. Behind him, the book he had dropped laid open-face down on the floor, its pages scratched and its spine bent. Shinra had published every detail they knew of the Ancients, even down to their unique biology with the Planet that allowed them strange dreams and visions. It had not talked about puberty.

In fact, as he stared down at Aeris, it hadn’t really talked about the Ancients as anything but magicians and wizards—mystical, magical, unreachable.

Aeris started to pull the folds of her dress up in order to search for the wound and Tseng threw his hands up.

“Stop! Stop. Aeris, it’s okay.”

Her fingers balled in her dress and shook with terrified rage. She chewed her lips, spit dribbling from them as she tried to formulate words. But the strange tone of his voice—calm, collected, and for once _gentle_ towards her, worked wonders just as magical as what he had read about the Ancients doing. Tseng took a breath. The magic wouldn’t last for long. He unbuttoned his jacket and draped it on her like a blanket.

“Your mom will explain. Okay?”

Aeris sniveled. Tseng asked her to stand up. It clearly did not register with her. Sighing, he knelt down and lifted her in his arms to her meek protests. Despite her aversion, she clutched at him with the sort of fervor he should’ve expected.

It hit him harder as he carried her down the road to her house—Aeris was afraid of dying.

Certainly it was clear that Ifalna had died, the Ancients were not immortals. But the fear...it was so primal in her. Tseng’s chest sank into his stomach as he realized further that Aeris had watched Ifalna wither and die with Hojo’s experiments. His _cruel_ experiments. Maybe she even thought the blood was that happening to her.

No, not a maybe. As he set Aeris down in the meager foyer while Elmyra rushed to her, figured what had happened, and led her to the upstairs bathroom, he knew that’s what Aeris thought.

Tseng sat at the kitchen table in stunned silence, the murmuring of Elmyra’s voice as she cooed and comforted Aeris with explanations and nuance he did not know how to give. The question marred him: did he not know how to give that nuance because he was not a girl, or was it because he thought Aeris was an Ancient as Shinra books had told him?

His jacket was folded in his arms. If Aeris had bled on it, he didn’t know, but either way he didn’t feel like he could put it back on at the moment.

The bathroom door opened. The shuffling of ten-year-old feet slunk to their bedroom. Rushing water ran so hot that steam drifted into the second floor. Then it stopped, punctuated with a hefty sigh from Elmyra, and the woman descended the stairs.

“I don’t think Aeris will be going out again, today,” she said dryly, “If that is what you are waiting for.”

Tseng looked at the woman, expressionless. What _was_ he waiting for? He didn’t have an answer, and that was clear. Elmyra moved to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. He was not offered any, not directly, but there was going to be enough if he had any interest.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” her voice softened a touch, “I was...expecting at least another year before I had to tell her.”

Tseng responded as dryly as she had been, but there was a rasp to his voice that betrayed that he had to force it, “Should I make a note of that in my log?”

Elmyra froze, her fingers becoming claws as she enunciated with dark clarity, “You’d record her first period?”

Tseng opened his mouth. As a Shinra man, he should. _Hojo would appreciate it_. Perhaps he’d even make a footnote in the next edition of the book he was reading. Aeris was the first record they had of an adolescent Ancient, wasn’t she?

He closed it.

Elmyra slowly loosened and put the kettle on the stove before turning around. The subdued fury of her gaze told him that at first Elmyra had not been speaking to him as a Shinra man but as a man, as Tseng, and in that moment nothing else. That made his mouth run drier. This was his job, he was not to be considered as anything but working, just as Aeris was not to be considered anything but an Ancient.

“I was going to thank you for bringing her back,” Elmyra said, speaking naturally but the tone was far darker than Tseng had heard from her before, “I will retract my gratitude for the time being.”

“Turks don’t work for gratitude,” he retorted, but the sentiment felt weak in front of her.

“Indeed you don’t.” She crossed her arms, her nails digging into her lightly liver-spotted skin at the elbows, “If you _must_ make record of it, I should like to write it instead of _you_.”

Tseng held her stare, the tension thicker than the walls of the church. He broke it by closing his eyes with a steady inhale.

“Her birthday is in three months. That will be sufficient enough for them to draw their own conclusions.”

He felt Elmyra’s eyes remain on him for a while, contemplating, extracting the truth he had slipped into the corporate language. After a while she sighed, the tension in her easing but not releasing.

The kettle started to whistle. Elmyra filled a teapot which must have been an heirloom—well-used with little cracks and stains in the china. Tseng must’ve answered well enough for her, because she filled a second cup for him without a request. When he reached out to slide it closer to him, however, her fingers pinned the dish to the table and he looked up to see her intense gaze again.

“What do you plan to do, Tseng?”

He blinked precisely once, “I don’t follow.”

Elmyra’s knuckles trembled from the force she put on them, “With her. With Aeris. What are you planning to do with her?”

Tseng was silent, still not quite understanding but wise enough to not bite back.

“What is she to you?” Elmyra switched. Tseng tilted his head slightly and answered.

“A mission objective.”

The woman shook her head, “No. Simpler than that.”

“An Ancient.”

“Further.”

“A girl?”

“What’s a girl, to you?”

Once again, Tseng wisely remained silent. Elmyra’s gaze narrowed as she continued on.

“There are some who’d say that she’s a woman, now. They’d call it a rite of passage to womanhood.”

Steady though he was, he felt his chest start to grow heavy as he stared at her.

“Would you say so, Tseng?”

“I presume you do not.” He lightly dodged. His fingers were still on the saucer, inches away from Elmyra’s and feeling ever hotter as Elmyra leaned closer and frowned deeper.

“I did not ask the question to myself, Turk. And the more you deflect the more I’m inclined to distrust you. If she is your _mission objective_ , you’ll be spending a lot of time observing her. You already do. I can only imagine that will continue. Answer me directly: _will you hurt her?_ ”

“No.” Tseng answered, level though his heart was racing at the implications Elmyra was trying to decipher, “I do not plan to. Shinra would have my head if the Ancient came to harm.”

Elmyra’s face split into a scowl and she yanked the tea from his hand, “A flimsy line in a rulebook being the only thing keeping you from harming her is not good enough—,”

“No.” Tseng agreed, “It isn’t. But I can’t well reply to a leading question in any way that would satisfy you, can I?”

The mother’s dangerous gaze bored into him and she repeated, “What is Aeris to you?”

Quiet, Tseng drifted his eyes away from her as he contemplated the full depth of that question. An Ancient, a child—which one came first, though? An escapee, Shinra’s most wanted, a mission objective, a gardener, an orphan, an adolescent who had their lecture on puberty one day too late. Not words crammed onto a page for mass production, but flesh and blood. Hojo would and had already done terrible things to be as close to an Ancient as Tseng was, yet it seemed the Ancients were still just words on a page to him.

Aeris was so afraid to die she clung to him for comfort even after she screamed that she didn’t trust him.

Tseng finally answered, eyes focused on a dusty corner of the floor, “It did not occur to me that I could’ve physically brought her to Shinra when she screamed today,” he brought his gaze back to Elmyra, “I knew she needed her mother. That’s all I thought.”

Elmyra held firm, though now it was staring just to stare. Then she straightened, released the tea saucer and passed it within Tseng’s reach before sitting across from him. Her shoulders sagged and her eyes dropped from him to the space in front of her. At once Tseng realized that she knew even if he _did_ have sour intentions with Aeris there would be little—if anything—that she could do about it. Yet like a lion she bared her teeth to him, telling in no uncertain terms that she would do whatever she _could_ despite her powerlessness. Tseng watched her eyes travel to the staircase behind him. It occurred to him then that he had never heard Aeris’s bedroom door shut. Not only must it be ajar, but she, like any ten-year-old, was listening to every word they were saying.

Like _any_ ten-year-old, because she was just like them. Just like he had been at that age.

“How is she?” he murmured, the back of his neck prickling in lieu of him making the obvious glance up to the second floor.

“Exhausted.” Elmyra answered, ironically describing how she looked at the same time.

Tseng made a sympathetic noise and sipped the tea. Cheap, black tea. But tea.

A smile creased Elmyra’s features after a moment, quite intentional and deep. Tseng cocked an eyebrow, getting the feeling it was directed at him. Elmyra kept her secret until their tea was nearly gone before saying, “I’ll be sure to tell her you stayed behind to ask that.”

Tseng had no response.

Finishing his tea, he stood up, jacket still folded over his arm, and gave Elmyra a curt bow before turning to leave.

“Thank you, Tseng.” Elmyra said with a sigh that finally relieved all their tension. The only acknowledgment the Turk gave towards the unnecessary gratitude was a pause in the open doorway.

Then he left, getting rid of his books in the church before returning to Shinra.


End file.
